All change

Leaving Malta, in March, where the lockdown was being effectively put into place, was strange enough. The main point was that most people seemed compliant. The supermarket queues looked so strange and irritating to us, but little did we know what chaos and confusion we would have to live through for the next several months in Britain.  Our flight home was about half full.  It was perhaps the last EasyJet plane out of Malta. 

Here our government seemed hopelessly out of touch. Common-sense precautions were delayed for months, if put into effect at all.

Planes are now mostly grounded. We hear the airlines have scrapped all the old ones. The skies have been clear and quiet. The occasional military flight, far higher than normal commercial flights, leaves a distinct trace in the perfect blue.  

The excellent summer weather - bordering on drought - has made life tolerable as we faced the worst fears imaginable, but carried on with gardening, cautious shopping, zoom-calling, missing our dear ones. People have died in their tens of thousands.

We contemplate another huge depression as the disastrous effects of Brexit are forced onto us... plus the lockdown which has shut all hotels, shops, restaurants and pubs, parks, theatres, concert-halls, any place where people gather.  Though the government has encouraged race meetings (where the directors are friends or family of cabinet members).  As things were loosened, people went in their tens of thousands to the beaches, hugger mugger...  leaving tons and tons of filth and litter as they dragged home.  As the infection rates had been sinking, gradually, then they started to rise again.   Schools must shut. Schools must open. Grannies cannot see their little ones, but cleaners and nannies may go in and out.   All beauty parlours and hairdressers must shut, or perhaps open.  People must stand 2m apart, or 1m.     So companies have gone bankrupt.  The travel industry is reduced to miniscule amounts... who wants to travel in a closed space with strangers for hours?  I foresee a total economic collapse, as in the Great Depression - and that lasted 10 years.  Eventually the banks themselves, and the insurance companies, will take hits.... who foresaw the collapse of Equitable Life, or Lehmann Brothers?  I wonder if money will survive? Pensions?  This may sound grim - but honestly, who, five years ago, would have predicted Britain crashing out of the best trade arrangements in history, the most peaceable... and on a voluntary basis, and  fighting in the streets about who should or should not wear a mask?

Maks? Hijab? Race riots in America and growling injustices here too... Race riots!!!!! A racist president in the White House openly inciting violence.  And we, peaceable us, are (in a small way) stockpiling dried and tinned foods.... And JuicePlus+ too I think.  Will the supply chains break down? It's entirely foreseeable that many many household items and food goods will become very very scarce.  

   

We are actually putting a box of some of these stored foods into the VW, along with amusements, awning, bedding etc, because we are going camping in Sussex for a few days. Lucie who came here on holiday for a week after 3 months solo in her flat, stayed on for six weeks, but we will drop her in Forest Hill and then go on to Pulborough.   She has been working from here, a sea-swimming, and biking, and wild camping with her intrepid friend Miranda who biked round the world on her own not long ago.   Various friends have been here to party in a quiet way.. the social distancing acting as a kind of safety net.  John and Laura Pool, Tasha and Tom Day (who have moved to her folks' place at Luddenham while they househunt and wait for their baby to be born), Tom Sutton Roberts, Daisy Perkins, Hannah who's down from Edinburgh, so her social scene has not been just us crumblies.  She likes it here (free hotel).

So much has happened. So many shocks and fears. It has been, or is, like being in the first act of a dark opera... so far, everything seems to be going along ok... but we know, we all know that catastrophe is about to strike. And again, and again.   The second act will start during this winter.   

But today, after a hectic, frantic fortnight campaigning against a planning application on Ordnance Wharf, in which I succeeded in getting Jonathan Neame to put in an objection, we are off till Tuesday camping in Andrew's VW.  I am not really looking forward to it.  No facilities, no wifi.  I have a lot of art work to catch up on.... loving my ten week deep course in feeling-art.  Already seeing changes.  Have a bag packed with art materials and somehow have to negotiate Andrew's urges to always be doing something. No rest.  Though he walks much more slowly than me.  Weird.